Formatting text with Markdown

Markdown is a simple markup language you can use to easily add formatting, links, and images to plain text. If Markdown is enabled in your account, you can use it in the following places:

Ticket comments (from the agent interface)

Macros

Agent signatures

Dynamic content

For agents to use Markdown, an administrator has to enable it in your account. (see Enabling formatting options for agents). You cannot use Markdown if rich-text is enabled for your account.

Note: Markdown is not available in emails and email templates. If you enter text with Markdown syntax, the formatting will not render and the text will remain as is. Also, markdown has been deprecated in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

Adding Markdown to text

The following table shows examples of how you can use Markdown to add common formatting.

Note: These examples demonstrate one way you can add certain formatting. There might also be additional ways you can achieve the same formatting. There are also many more formatting options you can add with Markdown. For more options and information, see the complete Markdown syntax documentation.

You can also watch this short video.

Using Markdown in a Ticket (01:41)

Table 1. Examples of Markdown syntax

Formatting

Entered text

Published text

Bold

This is how you **bold** text.

Italics

This is how you *italicize* text.

Bulleted lists

* Bullet one (don't forget a space after the asterisk)

* Bullet two

Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.

Numbered lists

1. Step one

2. Step two

Note: Do not use a hashtag (#) when creating numbered lists in Markdown, as the symbol is used for other formatting.

Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.

Nested lists

* This is the first level of this list.

* To make a second level, add two spaces before the asterisk or number.

Note: You can add things like images, quote blocks, or links to a nested list in addition to just text.

Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.

Headings

# Heading level one (with a space after the #)

## Heading level two

### Heading level three

You can add up to six heading levels.

Note: You can add a row of equal signs (=) under a line of text to create Heading level one, or a row of dashes (-) under a line of text to create a Heading level two.

Block quotes

> Block quotes have to start and end with a blank line

> And each line of the quote starts with a right angle bracket and a space

Inline code

Here is some `inline code.`

Code blocks

```

This is a code block.

```

Note: Creating a blank line and then indenting the next line or lines with four spaces creates a code block too.

Hi trying to add our company address to the signature which has a suite as #201. Of course Markdown wants to make this a link to a ticket. Is there an easy way to take away the formatting just in this one instance?

Yes, the goal is that someone on mobile could click the link to open their phone app. In the limited mobile dev experience I have, if you add a hyperlink in the format: "tel:+18001234567" almost all mobile OSs know to open that number in the default phone app. And when a desktop user clicks the link it will just open their browser with "tel:+18001234567" in the URL, and for Macs it offers to open FaceTime.

How do you create the nifty yellow-colored boxes around your "Note" text call-outs? I'm currently in charge of building out my company's new repository site using the Zendesk Knowledge Base, and being able to call out important / significant information by enclosing it in a highlighted box would be a fantastic improvement over how we emphasize text on our old site. I'm assuming this is an HTML tag, not a markdown syntax, but I've been unable to figure out how to accomplish this. Any pointers?

To the best of my knowledge, the ability to highlight isn't actually possible in Markdown. The closest you can get would be to use three backticks ( ` ) to put that information in an inline code block.

@Ryan - FWIW this is one of the main reasons we use HTML email with Zen (and the fact that I personally use a screen reader, which is poor when reading text boxes on Web Forms).

I created a style in Outlook that mimics the code block in Zen, but of course you can highlight what you want. The only issue I have found is that Zen does not respect the font selection. I chose a mono spaced font (Courier), but Zen replaces this with a normal font.

Zen is not the best at formatting for Outlook, which is unfortunate as this is the most widely use business email client on the planet. Even if it might not follow standards very well, it should be specially catered for. IMHO. However, this is mainly OK.

Rob, while you're tweaking -- long missing from this article is the explicit instruction to include blank lines before and after bullet lists / numbered lists / code blocks. My infrequently-using light agents are often tripped by this (since many markdown flavors do not have this requirement.) Thanks!

I found the answer to my own question here in the comment section. It looks like you just have to use traditional html mark up (<b>, <u>, <i>, etc) which is actually much easier than markdown IMHO so that is great news. AND this works in triggers auto emails too which I didn't know and thought those were limited to plain text. Big win for us to find this!

Where are you pasting this text in Zendesk? In most cases you can right click or control+click on the text box and select Paste and Match Style to paste the text without any additional formatting carrying over. Have you given that a try?

Hi Jessie. It could be from anywhere - a snippet from webpage, word, pdf etc. There might not be a style to match it to but I'd just like to remove any formatting that has been applied to it. Same could go for text typed directly into the response and formatted using the WYSIWYG editor with multiple different styles which you want to undo for whatever reason.